Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners are serving sentences beyond the limit of the tariff for the crimes for which they were sentenced.

Prisoners serving indeterminate sentences have a minimum term, or tariff, imposed by the court for the purposes of punishment and deterrence. Once this has been served release is determined by the Parole Board on the basis of risk.

The latest figures for the indeterminate sentence prison population by tariff length and tariff expiry date can be found in table 1.9 of the Offender Management Statistics Quarterly Bulletin published on 29 0ctober 2015: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/offender-management-statistics-quarterly-april-to-june-2015